Crackdown in YellowstoneA Meat and Dairy Industries Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has pulled the rug out
from under Dan Wenk, the highly respected superintendent of Yellowstone
National Park. Wenk’s reliance on science rather than being a puppet for
politicians’ whims, however, ran counter to the approach of the Trump
administration toward anything that gets in the way of development, resource
extraction, or industry.

Under the cover of “reorganization,” Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has
pulled the rug out from under Dan Wenk, the highly respected superintendent
of Yellowstone National Park. Citing no reasons, Zinke reassigned Wenk to
Trump’s swamp in Washington, D.C. — which is not a national park. Wenk,
finding no reason to join the swamp, announced he would retire instead.

The real reasons for Zinke’s attack, however, have everything to do with
bison, grizzly bears, wolves and science — and implementing the Trump
administration’s priorities of placing special extractive interests over the
nation’s rarest wildlife resources.

For those who may not know, Wenk is a 43-year veteran of the National Park
Service who, among many other accomplishments, brought resolution to the
long-festering conflict of snowmobile use in Yellowstone. He was also the
guy in charge of re-opening the Statue of Liberty to the public after the
9-11 attacks. By every professional measure, he deserved to be the
Superintendent of the America’s first national park.

But there’s a lot more to Yellowstone National Park than just the
world-famous geysers and hot pools. For more than a century Yellowstone has
provided the sole refuge for the nation’s remaining, genetically-pure, bison
herd which once numbered in the tens of millions until nearly slaughtered to
extinction by those who “settled the West.”

The same goes for the grizzly bear, recently nominated as America’s
“national mammal.”

And then there are the wolves. Yellowstone was the site of their
reintroduction where, like the bison and grizzlies, they could finally find
safety from man’s never-ending drive to eliminate nature’s apex predators
and/or competitors in favor of domesticated livestock.

As Shakespeare wrote, “there’s the rub,” and so it proved for
Superintendent Wenk, who believed wolves, grizzlies and bison deserved their
place in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem that had co-existed for
millennia.

Wenk’s reliance on science rather than being a puppet for politicians’
whims, however, ran counter to the approach of the Trump administration
toward anything that gets in the way of development, resource extraction, or
industry.

Wenk found fault with the Interagency Bison Management Plan’s contention
that Yellowstone’s “carrying capacity” for bison should be 3,000 animals and
that those wandering outside the Park’s invisible boundaries should be
hazed, hunted, captured and shipped to slaughter. Instead, relying on
science not politics, Wenk believed the Park could easily handle 4,000 bison
and that any excess should go to repopulate tribal lands.

Since much of the land outside Yellowstone is also publicly owned, Wenk
believed America’s bison had as much right to wander, give birth, and graze
there as did the private cattle ranchers who have fought tooth and nail to
contain the bison inside the Park’s boundaries for a century or more.

He also believed science did not support delisting grizzly bears or wolves
from Endangered Species Act protections in the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem, let alone re-instating hunting them in the Park’s surrounding
states of Wyoming, Idaho and Montana.

As Wenk told reporters last week, “We’re not a livestock operation. We’re
managing a national park with natural systems. We do not believe the bison
population is too high or that any scientific studies would substantiate
that.”

Unfortunately, those who disagree with the mandates emanating from Trump’s
chaotic White House can expect to get their walking papers right quick. And
just like the other 35 senior Interior professionals who have been
reassigned under Zinke and Trump, that’s just what happened to
Superintendent Wenk — which is another Trump tragedy for the nation’s bison,
wolves, grizzly bears and our first and most famous national park.

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